Lawmakers on the Senate Judiciary Committee are turning their focus to the status of undocumented young people as the program that’s protected more than half a million Dreamers for nearly 12 years faces an uncertain future. New applications to the DACA program, which was established in 2012 via executive memorandum, have been frozen for the past three years after a federal district court judge in Texas found that it was unlawfully implemented. The program covered about 530,000 active recipients at the end of 2023, about 80% of them born in Mexico, according to the most recent data from the Department of Homeland Security. Durbin and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), the committee’s ranking member, last year co-sponsored the Dream Act, which would offer a pathway to permanent status for undocumented people who came to the US as children. But legislation offering relief to immigrants has been ensnared in political fights over border security and enforcement. The legal battle over DACA has landed back at the the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which ruled just a year and a half ago that the program was unlawful because it violated the procedural requirements of the Administrative Procedure Act. The court now will mull whether DACA regulations issued by the Biden administration fortify the program’s legal standing. The growing legal uncertainty over the program, plus the the looming presidential election, add to urgency for Congress to pass permanent protections for Dreamers, proponents say. Employers including IBM Corp., Starbucks Corp., and Google LLC, warned the appeals court in February that rescinding DACA’s removal protections and employment authorization would drain $460 billion from the gross domestic product.